Hand-held plastic scrapers for scraping ice and snow from the windshield of a vehicle are well-known. Typically, such scrapers include a single beveled scraping blade which extends from a handle portion thereof. In use, the user grasps the handle and scrapes the ice and snow from the windshield with the scraping blade. However, in inclement, cold conditions, the less physical exertion expended by the user, the better. In addition, the faster the ice and snow are removed, the faster the user can get out of the inclement conditions. Therefore, various prior ice scrapers have been designed to reduce the amount of energy expended by the user to remove snow and ice from the automobile windshield or to reduce the time necessary to scrape ice and snow from the vehicle.
In an attempt to reduce the amount of energy expended by the user, prior art ice scrapers have employed multiple blades on a single scraper. Representative examples include U.S. Pat. No. 4,719,660 issued Jan. 19, 1988 to Hopkins, U.S. Pat. No. 5,263,222 issued Nov. 23, 1993 to Johnstone, II, U.S. Pat. No. 5,099,540 issued Mar. 31, 1992 to Paschetto, and U.S. Design Pat. No. 294,416 issued Feb. 23, 1998 to Carroll. In the ice scraper of U.S. Pat. No. 4,719,660, a scraping blade extends from one end of the scraper which includes dual outwardly flared scraping arms. However, in the ice scraper of the '660 patent only one of the scraping arms (either the scraping edge or the shovel/squeegee edge) can be used at a time. Therefore, the energy expended by the user to utilize the ice scrapers of the '660 patent is the same as that of a single edge scraper.
In the ice scraper of U.S. Design Pat. No. 294,416, a dual removable blade assembly is employed wherein an upper blade assembly can apparently be removably secured to a lower blade assembly. However, a user must expend the same amount of energy utilizing the ice scraper of U.S. Design Pat. No. 294,416 as it appears that the blades of the upper and lower blade assemblies thereof would not simultaneously contact the windshield surface in a single scraping or cleaning action.
The ice scraper of U.S. Pat. No. 5,263,222 employs front and rear scraper blades which are positioned on opposite ends of the handle portion. However, the ice scraper of U.S. Pat. No. 5,263,222 is primarily concerned with providing added comfort to the user as the handle portion is supported by the blades positioned on opposite sides thereof. Notwithstanding that purported advantage, placing the blades on opposite sides of the handle requires more exertion by the user, as in order to benefit from the dual scraping design, the user must swipe a path which is more than the considerable distance between the two blades. Moreover, the two blades of the ice scraper of U.S. Pat. No. 5,263,222 only perform scraping action and thus this ice scraper does not provide an adequate cleaning blade assembly for removing the ice or snow after it has been scraped off the working surface of the vehicle or does not adhere to the vehicle working surface.
Although the ice scraper of U.S. Pat. No. 5,099,540 has multiple scraping surfaces, only a single scraping edge is provided on each side thereof. Therefore, for each scraping motion of the user, only one scraping edge is performing a scraping operation. In addition, the ice scraper of U.S. Pat. No. 5,099,540 does not include a blade assembly which acts as a squeegee. Accordingly, even if snow or ice is removed, partly or totally, from the vehicle windshield, it cannot be further removed as it will not be contacted again by another scraping edge.